Home Again

After 5 days and 4 nights in the hospital, I'm looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight! As of today, the doctors felt confident that my trips to the bathroom (to put it nicely) had lessened to the point that I no longer needed the I.V. to remain adequately hydrated. I am feeling much better, but will still probably require several days of "taking it easy" here at home in Chiang Rai.

While four nights in the hospital usually denotes a fairly serious condition, this was luckily not the case with me. The intestinal infection, was never very serious, but was simply a bit slower than usual in clearing up. This was due partly to the fact that the antibiotics most commonly used for GI infections (like Cipro) are not safe for use during pregnancy. So, I was forced to be patient with a slightly less effective and slower-working antibiotic (which, of course I was happy to do for the sake of the baby!)

Thank you so much for your prayers over the past five days, please continue to pray for my complete healing and return of energy over the next few days!

Tags:

• prayer
• health
• praise

A Mystery

Yesterday Lori had begun feeling a little better, and we had high hopes that she would be released yesterday afternoon. However, yesterday evening the Doctor was still concerned about the loss of fluids and asked her to stay one more night. It turned out to be a very good call, as Lori threw up "a lot" last night.

Lori's Doctor is now calling in an infectious disease specialist who will hopefully help us get to the bottom of this mystery illness. Through it all, the baby seems to be doing fine, kicking mom at all the regular intervals.

Please continue to hold Lori in prayer and pray for wisdom for all the Doctors to figure out exactly what's wrong and the safest way to make her better. Thanks for all your prayers.

Tags:

• prayer
• health

Lori is in the Hospital

Please join us in prayer for Lori as she was admitted to the hospital in Chiang Rai this morning for dehydration from vomiting. She has a stomach infection of some sort and the doctors are working on getting her an antibiotic which will be pregnancy-safe.

Please pray that she recovers her strength quickly, that her body would be able to keep some nutrients inside, and that the baby would be protected through this entire ordeal.

We will give you more updates as we receive more information.

Tags:

• prayer
• health

Praying for Missionaries

We appreciate our prayer partners so much! Unfortunately, we are sometimes less than diligent in keeping our prayer requests current on our blogs, always waiting until "something big" comes up before making an entry. I ran across this prayer guide on another missionary's blog and wanted to share it to help you pray for us even in those in-between-times when it feels like you don't have any specific requests to pray about.

1. It is not necessary that you ask God to give us good health. The important thing is that He gives us the measure of health that will best glorify Him.

2. We do not want you to pray that God will give us an easy path on the mission field and remove obstacles. Rather pray that He gives strength and grace to overcome the difficult God-given obstacles in ministry.

3. It is not so important that you pray that God should bless our activities. Ask that He censor our activities, for it is easy for time and energy to be spent on second-best things.

4. Do not pray for us as though we lived on a higher plane. We can become lonely, discouraged, irritable, and impatient. We can do a lot of missionary work simply in the energy of the flesh. Pray that the love of Christ may constrain us in all that we do.

5. Pray that, like the Apostle Paul, we may be willing to deny ourselves in order to make our lives an example to the national believers. Sometimes this means forfeiting rights, privileges, and material conveniences we have taken for granted all our lives, but which can be stumbling blocks to missionary service.

-written by an anonymous missionary

The truck named Suzi

Our Suzuki jeep has had a major engine problem (read the whole story here). The truck is currently at the mechanic and we are awaiting the diagnosis. Pray for us, that we'll have wisdom about how to proceed once we learn the problem. God has already provided a loaner vehicle for us to use in the meantime, but even now, we ask that you begin praying for the provision of a permanent replacement vehicle in the case that Suzi has rolled her last mile.

Affordable Airfare

Please join us in praying that my parents would be able to find affordable airfare to Thailand so they can visit for the birth of our first baby in July and August. A few days ago they found a pretty good online fare, but unfortunately it sold out right away and they were not able to take advantage of it in time. Now, it seems, all the available fares are double or triple the price of that "pretty good fare"... in other words very expensive. We are praying for God's extravagant provision in this matter; we pray that they will not only find an affordable fare, but one that is even cheaper than the original fare they missed.

Tags:

• travel
• prayer
• family
• pregnancy